On Christmas morning, the three McGinn brothers bounded out of bed and set off in search of a VHS-shaped present from Santa Claus.
Without even unwrapping the gift, Jamie, Tye and Brock knew the contents inside: “Don Cherry’s Rock ’em Sock ’em Hockey,” a mashup video of the year’s best hits, highlights and fights.
“Every year, we got the new one,” Jamie, now 33, remembers. “That was the first gift we always opened.”
One year, as the highlight reel rolled in the background and the family exchanged presents, an 8-year-old Brock began to panic. Six years younger than Jamie and four years younger than Tye, the red-headed youngest brother somehow forgot to get a gift for his middle brother.
He raced upstairs and returned with a hastily wrapped present in hand. Tye opened it. What did he find? A pair of used boxers.
“No one in the family knew he had done this,” Jamie said. “So you can imagine the shock on everyone’s face and the laughs we had.”
The last-minute surprise went over so well, it’s become a new tradition that lives on in this tight-knit family. Even to this day, the youngest McGinn brother will find funny places to hide the underwear to catch his brother off guard.
“Brock’s very clever and witty and likes to play practical jokes,” Tye, 31, said. “And he’s really good at them, too. That story sums up Brock pretty well.”
Ask any McGinn about the youngest boy in their family and they’re bound to tell you about the pranks Brock pulls on the golf course or the jokes he cracked during hockey trips or the way he needles his dad by rooting for the rival hockey team.
To the people who know him well, the phrase they use is it’s just, “Brock being Brock.”
But to Penguins fans, who might not know the 27-year-old winger so well, Brock McGinn is just beginning to introduce himself on the ice. Signed this offseason to a four-year deal that carries a $2.75 million average annual value, McGinn is proving his value as, arguably, the best penalty killer on NHL’s best penalty kill, a key cog on the shut-down Teddy Blueger line and, recently, an underrated scoring threat.
Now, as the time comes to unwrap another round of presents, let’s unpack the story of how Brock followed in the footsteps of his older brothers to become the third McGinn boy to play in the NHL — and how he forged his own identity as a hard-charging grinder on the ice with a prankster side off it.
The Green Vanbourghini and the road to the NHL
Bob McGinn raced through traffic on Highway 401 in Ontario, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his cell phone.
Each morning, the father of three made the hour-and-a-half drive into Toronto in his 1996 Green Dodge Caravan to sell furnaces and air conditioners. After a day’s work, he ventured back toward the family home in Fergus, a small, sleepy town best known for its Scottish festival and 18-wheeler truck show.
But he only doubled back halfway.
Meanwhile, his wife, Cori, scooped the two older boys at the bus stop with the car already packed with hockey bags and dinners in Tupperware containers. Often, they’d plan to meet in the middle at a race track. But sometimes, when traffic threw a wrench in the plans, the meeting place could turn into any place at all.
Somewhere along the highway, the cars would cross. Lights flashed. The two older boys piled in. Away the Caravan sped, back into the city where the boys played in the Greater Toronto Hockey League.
In total, the trusty van logged nearly 400,000 miles and burned through four transmissions. (Or maybe it was six transmissions, depending who is telling the story.)
Eventually, it became affectionately known as the “Green Vanborghini.” Credit Brock for coming up with the tagline.
“It was a hunk of crap,” Jamie said. “It was nothing special to look at. But it was our machine.”
All those hours on the road were the first miles in the long, winding journey that ultimately led Jamie to get selected 36th overall in the 2006 draft by the San Jose Sharks and Tye to get picked in the fourth round of the 2010 draft by the Philadelphia Flyers.
“My parents had to go through a lot of struggles, but I think it made our family stronger,” Jamie said. “Still, to this day, I don’t know how they’re able to do it. I’ve asked my dad, ‘How do you do it?’ He just said, ‘How do you tell your kid no when he wants to do something?’”
Before making the sacrifices to help his kids chase their athletic aspirations, Bob followed his own to Fergus. He had never even heard of the small town when the Fergus Thistles drafted him to play semi-professional lacrosse. But it was at the facility where the Thistles practiced that he first noticed the arena manager’s daughter, Cori, a figure skater with a fascinating family tree.
One of Cori’s grandfathers (Brock’s great grandfather) was the mayor of Fergus, making him a big fish in the small community. The other grandfather, Jimmy Tye, served as a scout for the Toronto Maple Leafs and — get this — he also worked as a professional studio wrestler who went by the stage name Al Dinger.
Soon, Bob and Cori wed and their home was bursting at the seams with three rambunctious boys.
“I’m going to give a lot of credit to my wife, Cori, for keeping the four boys under control at all times,” Bob said. “I say four because she seems to think that I was one of the boys.”
During the wintertime, Cori was the one who woke up every couple hours to flood a backyard rink. At first, it was nothing more than a sheet of ice and some goals. But as the boys grew, so too did the rink. Makeshift boards were fashioned around the ice. When the boys started lifting pucks and losing them in the woods, they installed chicken wire behind the nets. And when they refused to get off the ice at night, they posted flood lights on the deck.
“Like you read in stories, they literally put the skate guards on and would come in to eat dinner and then go back on the ice again,” Bob said. “It was pretty tough to get them off the ice.”
Jamie blossomed into a big, skilled power forward with a stubborn side who took pride in proving people wrong. Tye, a teddy bear off the ice, calloused into a 6-foot-3, 205-pound tough guy who was never afraid to drop the gloves to protect a teammate.
“Tye was always bigger and stronger than us,” Brock said. “It seemed like it would always end up being 2-on-1 just so we could survive the fight.”
And Brock? He was naturally gifted from the start. He could skate like the wind blew in rural Ontario. And even though he was half a decade younger than his brothers, his skillset evolved rapidly as he tried to do the same drills as his siblings. Playing against boys six and four years older, Brock also developed, almost out of necessity, an agitator’s attitude with underrated toughness.
“I’d hit him in the snowbanks out back and he’d come up with a cage full of snow,” Tye said. “A lot of games, we would be battling and probably cross the line a little bit too much and Brock would be running into mommy.”
At night, once all the board games and mini sticks matches were complete, the family gathered around the TV, where the family rivalries continued. Bob “bled blue” from his childhood as a Maple Leafs fan and passed that passion down to his oldest son. Tye, born in 1990, jumped ship to cheer for the Colorado Avalanche when they became a popular upstart team.
Brock, well, he had a different idea. If his dad and brother were going to cheer for Toronto, he’d root for the arch-rival Canadiens.
“I don’t even know if he knew any players from Montreal, but he just decided that he was going cheer for the Canadiens because he knew that would [tick] me off,” Bob said. “That is typical Brock right there.”
Doubters and draft days
As the demands of a growing family pulled the McGinns in different directions, they heard many naysayers question the time and financial commitment. Bob prefers not to discuss the specifics of those jeers. Maybe it’s the polite Canadian in him.
“But I’ll never forget,” he said. “Maybe that’s my Irish background.”
On draft day in 2006, the critics were silenced. Jamie McGinn traveled to Vancouver to hear his name called No. 36 overall by San Jose Sharks.
For the oldest, it was a dream becoming a reality. For his brothers, the selection was similarly significant. If their older brother could make it, why not them?
“I think that’s every Canadian kid’s dream growing up [to play in the NHL],” Brock said. “For me and Tye to see Jamie make it and play in the NHL, I think that just gave us that much more belief.”
If Jamie’s success paved the way, Tye’s journey illustrated to Brock that nothing was going to come easy. He didn’t make his junior team at 16. Then, after playing for the Ottawa 67s as a 17-year-old, Tye was cut from the team as an 18-year-old.
The middle boy resigned himself to the fact that hockey wasn’t in his future. He got a job at a local farm, bailing hay and plowing fields, while playing hockey just for fun.
“There was lots of times that I didn’t know if I was playing the following year, to be honest with you,” Tye said. “After being cut from Ottawa 18, I just really thought I was done.”
As fate would have it, Tye got a second chance with the Gatineau Olympiques, where he earned every minute he got. By the time the Flyers selected Tye, he wasn’t even watching the draft. Jamie had to call to tell him the news.
Brock’s story is somewhere in the middle of those two.
While the event coincidentally took place in Pittsburgh, the McGinns held a small family get-together at their home in Fergus for fear of draft-day disappointment. After a breakout season in the Ontario Hockey League’s Guelph Storm, Brock broke his scaphoid bone during his draft year. That limited him to just 33 OHL games during the 2011-12 season and forced him to endure several surgeries.
“I wasn’t really sure how the draft was going to go, or if I was going to get drafted at all,” Brock said.
Assuming Brock wouldn’t be picked until rounds later, the McGinns barely had an eye on the TV. But in the second round (47th overall pick overall), the Carolina Hurricanes made Brock the third boy to earn an opportunity in the NHL.
The three McGinn boys converged, wrapped in one big, emotional group hug.
An unheralded prospect blossoms into a Brocktober fan favorite
Not everyone in Carolina was sold on the somewhat-undersized Brock McGinn — at least not at first. After one of the first training camps, the coach of the club’s AHL affiliate in Charlotte, Jeff Daniels, phoned then-Hurricanes assistant general manager Ron Francis.
Uh, are you sure about this kid?
“He’s walking around the dressing room with his shirt off, and he looks 12,” Daniels relayed to the Raleigh News & Observer.
In spite of the skepticism, it didn’t take long for the spark plug to prove his impact on the game was larger than his 5-11 stature.
In 2015, Brock earned an opportunity for his NHL debut at the storied Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. Here in Pittsburgh, Mario Lemieux is famous for cracking into the NHL with a first-shift, first-shot goal. Brock’s start was nearly as immediate. The 21-year-old rookie followed his own rebound to beat Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard just 55 seconds into the game.
That goal was McGinn’s first in the NHL, but his biggest one came in the postseason several years later. In 2019, the upstart Hurricanes faced a do-or-die Game 7 in the first round of the playoffs against the Washington Capitals.
In the third period, McGinn dove across the goal crease to keep a puck out. Then, after saving the game in regulation, in double overtime, he won it. On a bang-bang play, McGinn boxed out Washington’s Tom Wilson in front of the net and redirected the puck past netminder Braden Holtby.
The Hurricanes swarmed McGinn, celebrating their first postseason series win in a decade.
“I don’t know if you have any feelings at that moment,” Brock said. “Your body just takes over and it’s just pure joy.”
McGinn’s playoff heroics and his fun-loving personality in the dressing room, vaulted him into fan-favorite status. Carolina players and fans began to see that same prankster mentality that created Christmas memories in the McGinn household.
During the 2019 season, the Carolina Hurricanes set up a Halloween buffet for the team — or so they thought. When they lifted the silver serving platter, a masked McGinn popped out from under the table to spook teammates.
They called the prank “Brocktober.” But you might just call it Brock being Brock.
A tight-knit family grows the game - and their bond
Today, Jamie, 33, is retired after an NHL career in which he racked up 617 games and 220 points. Tye, 31, continues to pursue professional hockey as a member of the Fischtown Pinguins in Germany. And at 27 years old, Brock is in the midst of making his mark on a new team.
They remain a tight-knit crew with a passion for the game. Back in 2016-17, Jamie came up with the idea to purchase a hockey team. The NHL had recently endured the 2012-13 lockout and the oldest brother was intrigued to learn more about the business side of the game.
“My job, my whole life was playing hockey,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about management, how bills got paid, or who or how much things cost.”
Together, as a family, they purchased a team in Southern Professional Hockey League called the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs, building it up the way they did that backyard rink all those years ago. The team sparked significant youth hockey growth in the Roanoke Valley. Each summer, the boys all venture to the area, where they donate a week of their time to work with young kids, inspiring them to chase the same dream that led all three to the NHL.
This Christmas, the family will be stretched in different directions. But this summer, they’ll all be together again. This summer, the McGinn clan that has already added a few grandchildren over the years will grow by one more when Brock marries his fiancé, Jamie Lee, on July 23.
About a dozen years ago, Jamie was the first to buy a cottage on Ontario’s Lake Belwood. The parents were next with a place about 18 or 19 cottages up the road. And then Tye, not far away on the same street. Brock, meanwhile, he keeps bouncing around. He’s now on his third place.
“He seems to buy new places when he’s away, and then the family gets to go move his stuff for him,” Jamie said, with a laugh. “Hopefully this is it, because I’m sick of moving his stuff.”
While life at the lake can wait, Brock is beginning to settle into his new home in Pittsburgh.
Mike DeFabo: mdefabo@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDeFabo.
First Published: December 25, 2021, 1:00 p.m.
Updated: December 25, 2021, 1:12 p.m.
